So if the magazine was started by a member of a third party, why the hell can't you provide coverage of Jill Stein or Roseanne Barr or Gary Johnson?

Why are you such a little whore to the Democratic Party?

You finally came out as a Socialist in 2009.

That's pretty pathetic that you were at the magazine for that long and couldn't admit what you believed in.

Now that you're out, you're just a little whore for the Democratic Party.

I have no idea why.

I do know that the Oakland staff of Barack Obama's re-election campaign attacked peaceful activists attempting a sit-in.

And had them arrested as well.

And I know you haven't said one damn word.

But then you're nothing but a chicken shit, right?

That's all you've ever been and ever will be.

You can lead anyone because you're too busy cowering.

You're such a sorry disappointment.

Let's turn to someone who never fails to stand up straight and speak truth to power, here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Friday,
August 17, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, Barack's Oakland
campaign includes staff that attacked veterans yesterday, Iraqis bury
their dead after the second most violent day of the year yesterday, the
stalemate continues in Iraq, the suicide epidemic continues in the US
military, Adam Kokesh and Bruce Dixon fact check Barack on Iraq, Jill
Stein talks about writing off all student loan debt in the US, and more.

Yesterday in Oakland some veterans were
attacked in public. The attack took place at Barack Obama's Oakland
campaign office and it was Barack's staff that attacked the veterans.
One female volunteer had the intelligence to see how badly attacking
anyone -- let alone veterans -- looked and she demanded that all
campaign workers follow her to the back. Prior to that, some staff (I'm
sure that's paid staff and volunteers) did attack veterans, pushed
them, shoved them, attempted to grab their camera and who knows what
else. And they scream and yell, "Get out of here! Get out of here!"
It was an ugly look at what happens when reality walks in the door and
the devoted can't take it so they attack. Everyone but the woman who
called everyone to the back should be removed from the campaign. That
behavior was outragous. The campaign should issue an apology for the
assault on veterans. You can see the tape US News & World Reports has posted.
It's not pretty. When the police use tactics like that, we are
appalled. There is no excuse for campaign staff (paid or volunteer) to
behave that way.

Those inside the office included Iraq Veterans Against the War's
Joshua Shephard and Scott Olsen -- both of whom were also participants
of Occupy Oakland. Scott, is of course, the veteran whose encounter with
Oakland police resulted in a fractured skull (among other injuries) and
the world was outraged. If the camera hadn't been there yesterday, how
far would it have gone? Supposedly chairs were also wielded against
the veterans? That's not in the video (the camera operator is knocked
to the floor at one point and who knows what happened during that
period). When Olson was attacked in 2011, it prompted a review by the
Oakland police into their policies. Something similar needs to happen
to Barack's Oakland office and Barack needs to issue a public apology to
veterans. (Will he? I doubt it. He's always the first to scream at
others for a supposed insult but the last to offer an apology. That
was the pattern as candidate in 2007 and 2008 and it's remained the
pattern -- as we saw most recently with regards to Poland.)

Veterans
are not props. Politicians love to use veterans to shore up their own
shoddy credentials. Those who have been happy to utilize (use) them for
their campaigns should have the maturity to apologize publicly when an
incident like what took place in Oakland goes down.

Joshua
Shepherd: We're calling for a full pardon of Bradley Manning as well as
an apology for Obama's statement that declared Bradley Manning was
guilty before he faced any judicial proceedings. You know the military
judicial system is not quite as fair as the civilian but it is, you know
there are certain measures and a minimum level of justice and due
process that is required. And the Obama administration has presided
over this obliteration of that system and much to Bradley's deteriment.

Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7, 2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported
in August 2010 that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the
Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of
violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his
personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized
software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight
counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified
information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud (Los Angeles Times) reported
that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges
including one that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could
result in the death penalty if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took
place in December. At the start of this year, there was an Article 32
hearing and, February 3, 2012, it was announced that the government
would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has yet to enter a
plea and has neither affirmed that he is the leaker nor denied it. His
court-martial was to take place next month but has been pushed back to
February.

Outside
the headquarters a woman explained, "American troops are being killed
all over Asia and the Middle East. American troops suicide rate is
higher right now than combat deaths. There's a reason for that."

Yesterday the Pentagon announced, "The
Army released suicide data today for the month of July. During July,
among active-duty soldiers, there were 26 potential suicides: one has
been confirmed as suicide and 25 remain under investigation. For June,
the Army reported 11 potential suicides among active-duty soldiers;
since the release of that report, one case has been added for a total of
12 cases: two have been confirmed as suicides and 10 remain under
investigation. For 2012, there have been 116 potential active-duty
suicides: 66 have been confirmed as suicides and 50 remain under
investigation. Active-duty suicide number for 2011: 165 confirmed as
suicides and no cases under investigation.During
July, among reserve component soldiers who were not on active duty,
there were 12 potential suicides (nine Army National Guard and three
Army Reserve): one has been confirmed as suicide and 11 remain under
investigation. For June, among that same group, the Army reported 12
potential suicides (nine Army National Guard and three Army Reserve):
seven have been confirmed as suicides and five remain under
investigation. The Army previously reported 10 Army National Guard and
two Army Reserve cases for June."

Leon Panetta is the Secretary of Defense. July 25th, he appeared before the House Veterans Affairs Committee. From that day's snapshot:

US
House Rep Mike Michaud: Quick question, and I want to read from a
Veterans Service Organization letter that they actually sent to Senator
[Jim] Webb just last week. And just part of it says, "The only branch
of the military to show a marked improvement decreasing the number of
persons taking their own life is the United States Marines. They should
also be praised for their active leadership from the very top in
addressing the problem and implementing the solutions. The remaining
services have yet to be motivated to take any substanative action. "
Secretary Panetta, I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan several times and
I've looked the generals in the eye and I've asked them what are they
doing personally to help the stigmatized TBI, PTSD? And the second
question is: Do they need any help? I get the same answer over there as
I do over here in DC: 'Everything's okay. We've got all the
resources we need. We don't need any help.' But the interesting thing
is someone much lesser ranked came up to me, after I asked the general
that question, outside and said, "We need a lot more help." And he
suggested that I talk to the clergy to find out what they are seeing
happening. And I did that trip and every trip since then. And I'm
finding that our service members are not getting the help that they
need. And my question, particularly after looking at this letter that
was sent to Senator Webb, it appears the Marines are doing a good job so
why is it so different between the Marines, the Army and other
branches? And can you address that?

Secretary
Leon Panetta: You know -- Obviously, there's no silver bullet here. I
wish there were to try to deal with suicide prevention. We-we have a
new suicide prevention office that's trying to look at programs to try
to address this terrible epedemic. I mean, we are looking. If you look
at just the numbers, recent total are you've got about 104 confirmed
and 102 pending investigation in 2012. The total of this is high,
almost 206. That's nearly one a day. That is an epedemic. Something
is wrong. Part of this is people are inhibited because they don't want
to get the care that they probably need. So that's part of the problem,
trying to get the help that's necessary. Two, to give them access to
the kind of care that they need. But three -- and, again, I stress this
because I see this in a number of other areas, dealing with good
discipline and good order and, uh, trying to make sure that our troops
are responding to the challenges -- it is the leadership in the field.
It's the platoon commander. It's the platoon sergeant. It's the
company commander. It's the company sergeant. The ability to look at
their people, to see these problems. To get ahead of it and to be able
to ensure that when you spot the problems, you're moving that individual
to the kind of-of assistance that they need in order to prevent it.
The Marines stay in close touch with their people. That's probably one
of the reasons that the Marines are doing a good job. But what we're
stressing in the other services is to try to develop that-that training
of the command. So that they two are able to respond to these kinds of
challenges.

US House Rep Mac Thornberry also raised the issue of suicides, noting Time magazine's
recent cover story (July 23rd issue), Mark Thompson &; Nancy Gibbs'
"One A Day: Every day, one U.S. soldier commits suicide. Why the
military can't defeat its most insidious enemy." He raised the issue of
"33% of all military suicides have never deployed overseas at all and
43% had deployed once." Panetta confirmed that statistic from the
article was accurate. Panetta argued that suicide is on the rise "in
the larger society" and that this is reflected within the military.

Today Rebecca Ruiz (NBC News) emphasizes
this point on the latest suspected suicides, "Bruce Shahbaz, a medical
analyst on the Army's Suicide Prevention Task Force, told Time
that experts did notice the deaths of non-commissioned officers
outnumbered those of junior enlisted members for the first time since
2001." Mark Thompson (Time magazine) adds,
"The Army has been fighting suicides when they were occurring at the
rate of nearly one a day -- in fact, that was the cover line on a Time story
last month into the vexing problem of soldiers killing themselves after
a decade of war. But July's 38 likely suicides spread over the month's
31 days works out to almost 1.25 suicides a day." For service members
in need, there is Military One Source which does include a crisis hotline 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255). There is also online counseling.

But Military One Source doesn't always work for service members as yesterday's report by David Martin (CBS Evening News) noted
utilizing a talk Rebecca Morrsion gave in June at the annual DoD and VA
suicide conference in which she spoke of her husband Capt Ian Morrison
taking his own life, how he went to two different clinics but received
no help and how he then dialed Military One Source, "He was on hold with
Military One Source for over an hour before he hung up." Greg Jaffe (Washington Post) quotes
mental health social worker and the wife of a Marine who took his own
life seven years ago Kim Ruocco stating, "The military really is
trying hard. But we need more money, more resources, and we need to
make mental health care a higher priority. There are still too many
gaps in care and too long of waits for soldiers seeking care."

Justin Moyer (Washington Post) reports
on a University of Utah study entitled "Reasons for Suicide Attempts in
a Clinical Sample of Active Duty Soldiers." The paper argues,
"Explicit skills training in alternative behaviors that serve an emotion
regulation function (e.g. mindfulness, relaxation, cognitive
restructuring) could replace the use of suicidal behaviors for this same
purpose." Katie Drummond (Forbes) notes,
" Analysts suspect that as troops draw-down from combat zones overseas,
more veteran soldiers -- many of whom have been deploying consistently
since the dawn of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are struggling
to reintegrate into civilian life."

Jamie Crawford (CNN) quotes
the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen Lloyd Austin, "Suicide is the
toughest enemy I have faced in my 37 years in the Army. And it's an
enemy that's killing not just Soldiers, but tens of thousands of
Americans every year. That said, I do believe suicide is preventable.
To combat it effectively will require sophisticated solutions aimed at
helping individuals to build resiliency and strengthen their life coping
skills."

In Iraq, Adam Schreck (AP) notes,
families were burying yesterday's victims: "Dozens of people carried
the coffins of relatives through the streets of the neighborhood
Friday. Some mourners wept, while others sought solace by chanting 'God
is Great'." Yesterday, Iraq was slammed with a wave of violence. Today the numbers are still rising. AP earlier reported 59 died from yesterday's bombings and shootings. But Iraqi officials later claimed the death toll was 93. Thursday was the second largest death toll day since Decembr. Al Mada notes the wave of violence and that the dead included at least one child (Kirkuk home bombing). Alsumaria reports
that a Nineveh Province citizen's council is blaming the Ministry of
Health for the death of many wounded. Why? They state that the
Ministry has inadequately funded the hospitals leading to a lack of
doctors and ambulances which resulted in a number of wounded whom they
feel should have survived the attacks instead ending up among the dead.
The Minister of Health is Dr. Majeed Jamil. Alsumaria also notes that others, including a member of the Parliament's Security and Defense Committee, are calling out the security plan. France's Foreign Ministry issued the following statement today:

France
condemns in the strongest possible terms the attacks carried out on
Thursday throughout the country, which took the lives of more than 50
people and injured more than 200.

It offers
its condolences to the Iraqi people and the families of the victims,
and expresses its solidarity with the Iraqi authorities in their fight
against terrorism

France stands by Iraq's
side and reaffirms its full support for the Iraqi government, which is
engaged in an effort to promote recovery, stability and security. It has
decided at the highest level to support Iraq in its stabilization and
reconstruction process. This commitment, which we are determined to
fulfill, has translated notably into programs to provide training in
law, security and governance. It represents one of our priorities in our
cooperation with Iraq. We are ready to study any additional requests by
the Iraqi authorities in this area.

I
am appalled at the wave of heinous attacks that shook the country
throughout the day yesterday," said Mr. Kobler, who extended his
condolences to the families of those killed and wished a speedy recover
for the wounded.

Noting that the attacks
coincided with the onset of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the
end of Ramadan, Mr. Kobler also condemned the violence for disrupting
the spirit of peace associated with one of the holiest days in the
Muslim calendar.

The political crisis continues in Iraq and the 'Reform Commission' -- now just a list -- becomes more laughable each day. The Sadr bloc notes that a piece of paper is not going to solve the ongoing crisis. Al Mada reports
that State of Law is stating that they did not bother to address the
issue of the three presidencies. That's Speaker of Parliament,
President of Iraq and Prime Minister. It's not a minor issue. It's one
State of Law has hissed at publicly when others raised it -- Moqtada
al-Sadr, Ayad Allawi and Massoud Barzani among others have raised.
Nouri has had two terms and, in Februrary 2011, announced he would not
seek a third term when rulers in the region were being forced out of
office. He quickly took back that promise and his attorney has told the
press repeatedly that Nouri can seek a third term. If Nouri doesn't
try for a third term, State of Law loses the office because they have no
other name leader -- they're a motley band of has-beens and strugglers
who've made no real impact on the political scene. And they know
Moqtada al-Sadr wants to be prime minister as does the Islamic Supreme
Council of Iraq's Ammar al-Hakim and Adil Abdul-Mahdi and Ibrahaim
al-Jaafari (for al-Jaafari, it would be a second term as prime minister)
so if Nouri can't have a third term, short of poaching from a rival
political slate, State of Law stands a good chance of petering out.

All Iraq News notes
that Arshad Salhi, head of the Turkmen Front, has stated that the three
presidencies, the Cabinet ministers and the MPs should all hold a
meeting to address the situation in Iraq and that the meeting should
continue until all can reach a shared solution on what needs to be done.
Al Mada notes
that ISCI states meetings will be held following Eid al-Fitr. Still
hiding out in Germany, Jalal Talabani issued a statement hailing the
'progress' on the political crisis, Alsumaria notes.

As All Iraq News notes,
there continues to be disagreement about the composition of the
Electoral Commission. This was supposed to have been decided long, long
ago. And a law passed. Elections are supposed to take place in March
of next year (provincial elections). The Parliament recently extended
the 'current' commission by 35 days while they continue working on the
new law. ('Current' written that way because before they were extended,
their terms really had ended.) The National Alliance's Qassim al-Araji
states that the commission should be expanded (increase the number of
members) and he criticized those who are opposing this move.

This
is an outright lie, as more than a hundred thousand US – financed
mercenaries remain in Iraq indefinitely, and the Obama White House
fought till the last minute to get its Iraqi client state to set aside
the Status of Forces agreement negotiated under the Bush administration
which required all official US forces to leave the country.

Adam
Kokesh: "Number Two. He ended the war in Iraq and is drawing the war
in Afghanistan to a close. Like he said he would." Holy f**king s**t,
this is pathetic. If you're anti-war, if you understand that war is just
a f**king embarrassment -- and I do because I'm a veteran, I was in
Falluja in 2004, I get it. Yeah, war is a racket, just like Major
General Smedley Butler said, always has been, always will be. So
here's the thing. You're going to support a guy who's 'ending the war
in Iraq' was actually attempting to keep it going longer than we would
have had it end under the Bush plan? Now when he [Barack] took office,
there was the Bush plan [SOFA] in place and he [Barack] promised to end
the war immediately but instead did everything in his power to extend
the Bush plan. And as it was, what we got with Obama, in terms of Iraq
policy was exactly what we would have had under Bush except it looked
worse and was more two-faced. Yeah. Afghanistan? He's bringing
Afghanistan to a close? Yeah, after a surge. That's like saying to
someone who's-who's robbing your house, "Oh, can you only just clear out
one more room before you stop robbing me?" I mean are you serious? This
is like, this is a feather in Obama's cap that he's bringing the war in
Afghanistan to a close after sending in a surge of 30,000 troops on top
of the 100,000 that were already there? And now keeping the 100,000
that were already there as long as he can possibly get away with?
That's your idea of ending a war? That's like shoving that guy out of
your house who's robbing you and saying, "Thank you for leaving."

While
it isn't her official title, Dr. Jill Stein sure sounds like the first
presidential candidate of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Stein,
technically the Green Party nominee, is running a longshot but
aggressive campaign against a political system she feels has capitulated
to corporate interests.

She sees no
difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, and she thinks
voters are tired of both of them. So she's calling for a "voter
rebellion."

"We must occupy our elections
just as we must occupy our banks and our schools and everything else,"
Stein said in an interview during a visit to Seattle to speak at
Hempfest, in addition to other events. "Because they belong to us."

Ross
Reynolds: And you're certainly putting forward some proposals that
we're not hearing from the major candidates. Among them, a plan to
forgive current student loan debt. Now I saw that it was 904 billion
dollars in the first quarter of 2012. Are you talking about forgiving
all of that debt? And who's going to pay for it?

Jill
Stein: Yeah. I mean, we are talking about a trillion dollars worth of
student debt. We found a way to forgive much more than that from the
bankers who caused this problem with the waste, fraud and abuse on Wall
Street. We think that the students who are the victims of this waste,
fraud and abuse ought to have equal forgiveness. So there are a variety
of ways to do it. There are some proposals that we do in other
quantative easing but it's time to do it for student debt rather than
motrgate debt. There are a variety of solutions. I can't say that
we're dedicated to any one of them at this point but I think in
principle it's really important that we bail out the students for all
kinds of reasons. Our economy depends upon it. They are endentured
servants basically. In order to move forward, we need to get them out
of debt.

Ross
Reynolds: You've talked about a plan to create 25 million jobs. That's
huge. Where would the money come from to pay for that?

Jill
Stein: In short, the money would come from downsizing the military.
We're spending a trillion dollars a year now in this bloated
military-industrial-security complex. That has been doubled over about
the last ten years. Certainly without doubling our security in many
ways. We are just as insecure as ever -- dropping bombs on funerals and
weddings out of our drones which are proliferating madly. This does
not buy us security. Over a thousand military bases scattered in over
100 countries around the world. Indeed, the trillions that we spent on
Afghanistan and Iraq have not made us more secure, they've not made Iraq
and Afghanistan more secure, they continue to teeter on the brink of
civil war. So much of the money would come from the military, much of
it would come from taxing Wall Street -- a Wall Street transaction tax,
also known as a Robin Hood tax which would be a good in of itself for
discouraging reckless Wall Street speculation. We're also looking at
health care as a human right which actually saves us money. Trillions of
dollars over the coming decade would be saved not only by reducing the
massive health insurance bureaucracy but also by stabilizing medical
inflation.

Thursday,
August 16, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, a State of Law MP goes
on TV to blame the Kurds for today's wave of violence, Julian Assange
and Ecuador steal focus, Camp Ashraf, Jill Stein and Roseanne Barr, and
more.

Anthony
Fest: The whistle blower website WikiLeaks released another trove of
confidential documents today. Last month WikiLeaks released thousands of
Pentagon documents most associated with the US occupation of Iraq. In
contrast, the documents made public today include thousands of
diplomatic cables -- communications between the State Dept and
Washington and US consulates all around the world. The documents cover
both the George W. Bush and the Barack Obama administrations. WikiLeaks
gave an advance look at the documents to several media organizations
including the New York Times and the British newspaper the Guardian.
Those publications now have articles on their websites analyzing the
documents. WikiLeaks says it will post the documents on its own website
in the coming days although it has said its site was the target of a
cyber attack today. The documents release is certain to provoke tension
between the US and its allies. For example, some of the cables say that
Saudi donors are the largest financiers of terror groups. Other cables
detail the cover-up of US military activities. One of them records a
meeting last January between US Gen David Petreaus and the president of
Yemen about air attacks against rebels in Yemen. The president, Ali
Abdullah Saleh, tells Petraeus, "We'll continue to say they are our
bombs and not yours." According to the Guardian, the documents reveal
that some Arab leaders had privately urged an air attack against Iran
and that US officials had been instructed to spy on the United Nations'
leadership. Among the other disclosures are deep fears in Washington and
London about the security of Paksitan's nuclear weapons. Another
document asserts massive corruption at high levels of the Afghanistan
government saying the Afghan vice president traveled to the United Arab
Emirates carrying $52 million in cash. Still other documents disparage
the British military in Afghanistan.

In 2010, WikiLeaks was still doing major releases. In fact, that was probably the high water mark for WikiLeaks. Already, Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks had released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Still in 2010, June 7, 2010,
the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he
stood accused of being the leaker of the video. And that was part of
the change. At that point, the head of WikiLeaks and the face of
WikiLeaks to the media and the world, Julian Assange, was stating that
they didn't know who the leaker was (that leaked the material to them).
Ever since, Julian Assange has lived on the defensive.

Today he's in the news cycle because Ecuador is offering him asylum.

If
the last four years have taught those of us on the left anything, it
should have taught us that there is no excuse or justification to whore
for one person, that we either stand up for what we believe in and do so
truthfully or we're liars in the eyes of the whole country.

Ecuador has granted asylum to Julian Assange which is pretty much conditional upon
his getting out of England or else hoping to live in the Ecuador
Embassy in the UK. Michael Ratner wants to assert that Ecuador is
"doing what was legally required here." That is incorrect. That is a
falsehood. As someone who has repeatedly advocated for Canada to grant
asylum to US war resisters, I have never argued that Canada had to do so
or that they were legally required to. Because they weren't. No
country is required to grant someone asylum. That is why cases for
asylum are argued.

There are enough lies out
there with regards to the Julian Assange case. More do not need to be
put out there. It is also dishonest for Michael to assert claims to
legal rights of asylum when stating that the UK needs to back off.
Julian Assange was released on bail. He is in violation of British law
currently.

You can assert that B means we
follow the law while ignore the earlier event (A). But when you assert
that, you look like you are eithter uninformed or dishonest to anyone
who knows the actual details. In addition, you make others look foolish
for believing you. Kimberly Wilder (On The Wilder Side) is an intelligent and caring person.
And she believed she could trust that 'trusted voices' were telling the
truth. She has outraged several who have e-mailed this site about her
comments regarding the accusations against Julian Assange in Sweden.
Her pithy claim that they wouldn't even be crimes in the US is
embarrassing. It appears that the Grand Idiot Naomi Wolf has influenced
Wilder's take (either through reading or hearing Wolf or hearing
others repeat Wofl's arguments). Here's a tip for every woman in the
US, when it comes to rape don't trust Naomi. This is the woman who
stayed silent following a gang rape -- excuse me, that's wrong. This is
a woman who stayed silent in terms of going to the authorities but who
laughed with the rapists the night after a gang rape -- laughed about
the victim, laughed about the victim's shoe left behind in the frat
house as she escaped following her gang rape. Why did Naomi laugh? She
didn't want to be called a lesbian.

Nothing
could hurt the cock-driven (cock-starved?) Naomi Wolf more than to be
called a lesbian. Why didn't she call the authorities? On that she's
remained silent. But when a professor apparently made a pass at her in
the midst of a private evening (he denied it, she said it happened), she
wanted the whole world to know about it, over a decade later. (Did it
happen? I have no idea. But after you've mocked a victim of gang rape
with her rapists and then been stupid enough to share that story, don't
expect sympathy from me.) Ava and I have repeatedly warned against that nutcase over the years (in terms of the nutcase and Assange, see "TV: Saboteurs").

The
harm she's done on the Assange case will not go away. That's why you
don't lie. Someone's going to believe you're on 'our side.' When it
comes to rape, however, 'our side' gets a hell of a lot smaller and any
woman capable of self-honesty will admit that. When it comes to the
environment, the left is one big happy family, hugging trees and
replanting forests. When it comes to issues of violence against women,
the left willing to call it out is about a quarter of what it was for
the environment.

Michael at least says "my
view" at one of his most ludicrous moments. But he's an attorney and he
should know better so the "my view" is nonsense. He asserts that
Julian "has a right to leave that embassy, get on a plane and go to
Ecuador. Will the British ever honor that . . ."?

The
British right to arrest him -- he is a fugitive -- trumps the right of
Ecuador. They are on British soil. It is not complicated and Michael
knows that. As does Julian Assange which is why Assange isn't strolling
through London to an airport right now.

The
dishonesty is so disappointing because we don't need more of it on the
left. If you want to make a case for Julian Assange going to Ecuador,
you should be able to do so without resorting to falsehoods. When
Michael Ratner, an intelligent and usually thoughtful person, presents
the sloppy throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks faux
legal argument that he has, anyone paying attention is going to wonder:
"If Michael Ratner can't make a plausible legal case, does that mean
that there's not one?"

In fairness to Michael,
he's not speaking as a legal analyst and shouldn't have been presented
as such. He's working for Assange. A real public affairs program that
operated under journalistic standards would have presented him with
another guest who took a different opinion. And the back-and-forth of
such an exchange probably would have greatly sharpened Michael's own
argument.

He makes assertions on aslyum
that are puzzling at best. He asserts that "once you've been given
asylum, it's not like you can be then picked up by a country and sent
into the hands of your persecutor. Whether it's in the car, whether
it's on the streets, wherever you are, it's illegal to do so." There's
no UK case law that backs that up. If there's an international law that
states that, I'm unfamiliar with it -- I am unfamiliar with it and many
countries are also unfamiliar with it because this standard he's
applying has not been the standard. If you are wanted for murder and
you claim you're a political target and Spain agrees to give you asylum,
unless you are in Spain, the authorities have the right and will
attempt to arrest you. This is not a new development.

Michael
Ratner is incorrect when he says it's the law. Asylum isn't a floating
space in the midst of a game of tag-you're-it. You're granted asylum
at an embassy or in that host country. By Michael's logic, Julian can
remain in London, he can travel all over and, if anyone tries to arrest
him, he just says, "Uh-uh, I've got asylum from Ecuador." That's not
how it works.

Michael asserts that, "It's
illegal for them to stop Julian Assange trying to get to Ecuador." In
what world? Does he not know any of the asylum cases during the lead up
to WWII? I cannot believe anyone would make such a claim.

We
deserve better than that from Michael Ratner or from anyone. What was
broadcast today was a bunch of cheery, beat off material. I believe the
left has self-pleasured enough for the last four years. Let's try
reality and honesty instead.

We can discuss
this again tomorrow but for now I am tired of people lying to make their
political cases, I am tired of all the whoring. I realize it's
ingrained in some, certainly a number were more than willing to repeat
as gospel whatever the party line was out of the mouth of Joseph
Stalin. It needs to stop. Kimberly Wilder is a smart and caring
person. She's repeated a false claim because the left media whored.
They refused to tell the truth. That needs to stop right now. On the
left we need to be smarter and more factual. We're not helping anyone
by dumbing ourselves down. (And Bob Somerby tries to make that argument
every day at The Daily Howler. I wonder how many of us even listen?)

The
left needs to grow the hell up, all of us. And that includes losing
the need to paint anyone who thinks as we do (or appears to) as
marvelous, wonderful and 100% pure. There is a growing number of people
(possibly a small number but it's out there, we encounter them when we
speak to college audiences especially) who feel Assange distracts from
political prisoner Bradley Manning (I agree) and that Assange should
turn himself in already because with his talk show and his this and his
that he's become a joke (it's his decision to turn himself in or not, I
have no opinon on that). I would like that to be the end of it this
week on Assange and hope that Monday, when the latest Law and Disorder Radio, rolls around -- which is hosted by Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and, yes, Michael Ratner
-- that Michael will have sharpened his argument regarding to Julian
Assange and we can open the snapshot with his explaining to us why the
amnesty must take place. He can, for example, present the same claims
as the ethical (or "moral" -- but I refrain from the use of that term
whenever possible) choice. That's fine. But don't claim something's
the law when it's not. We can't afford to be any more ill-informed or
mis-informed in this country. And we can't afford to lose someone as
smart as Michael Ratner to the easy-bake punditry that has afflicted so
many on the left.

Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observes,
"The current Muslim holy month of Ramadan was bloody for Iraqis as al
Qaeda in Iraq carried out a number of deadly attacks across the country,
targeting mainly Shiite areas." And the violence of the month
continued today as Iraq was slammed with a wave of violence. RT offers a photo essay of some of the damage. At least nine cities have seen major violence. Kareem Raheem, Mustafa Mahmoud, Jamal al-Badrani, Fadhil al-Badrani, Ali Mohammed, Barry Malone and Patrick Markey (Reuters) note
that while no one has claimed credit for today's violence -- it may
be the work of one group or of many groups and individuals -- the
Islamic State of Iraq has been taking credit for recent violence
(following the announcement of their Breaking The Walls campaign) and "It has been reinvigorated by the inflow of fighters and cash into neighboring Syria,
providing a morale boost and some extra arms and cash, security experts
say. Iraqi insurgents are vowing to retake territory lost during a long
war with American troops." And such a move -- retaking
territory -- would explain why some of the al Qaeda in Iraq that is now a
part of the Free Syrian Army is reportedly buring weapons (see yesterday's snapshot) to prepare for the "after" if President Bashar al-Assad is driven out of power. July 22nd,
the Islamic State of Iraq released an audio recording announcing a new
campaign of violence entitled Breaking The Walls which would include
prison breaks and killing "judges and investigators and their guards."
(They also threatened to attack America on US soil.) Regardless of
which individual or individuals are behind today's attacks, it is a
bloody day in Iraq.

al Bawaba reports,
"In the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk (north), four car bombs exploded
between 08.15 and 09.30, killing one person and injuring 20 others,
according to a police official and Dr. Wali Karim from the main
hospital in the city. Many members of the security forces were among the
wounded, added the two sources." Xinhua reports,
"In addition, gunmen with assault rifles attacked a police checkpoint
at an intersection just west of Baquba, killing one policeman and
wounding another, the source added. Meanwhile, a member of the
government-backed Awakening Council group was gunned down by gunmen near
his house in Aswad village, some 9 km north of Baquba, he said." Near
Baquba, Alsumaria reports,
MP Hussain Kazhim Mahmud declared that his bodyguards were attacked
today by 30 gunmen in three cars outside his Khalis office resulting in
one assailant being killed and two of his bodyguards being injured (he
is part of the Sadr bloc in Parliament). Salam Faraj (AFP) reports,
"In Al-Garma, near the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah west of
Baghdad, four policemen were killed and three others wounded in a
shooting at a checkpoint, according to police Major Enes Mahmud and Dr
Omar Dalli at Fallujah hospital. As emergency responders and civilians
rushed to the scene, a roadside bomb exploded, wounding three others." Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports,
"A car bomb exploded outside a real-estate building in northeastern
Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing six people and wounding 32 others,
police said. Also Thursday, a car bomb exploded on a busy road in
al-Taji district on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, wounding nine
people, police said." Alsumaria reports
the Tikrit police disarmed a car bomb at noon today but a Salahuddin
Province home bombing resulted in the death of the wife of Mushtaq Ahmed
al-Jaffar and left him and three of their sons injured. Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) counts 29 dead and one-hundred-and-one people injured.

BBC News notes
of today's violence throughout Iraq, "Many of the attacks targeted
security personnel." Police, soldiers, Sahwa. There are 15 more days in
the month but already August has been a violent one. Through
yesterday, Iraq Body Count counts 206 violent deaths in Iraq so far this month.

Press
TV: Why do you think there has been a spike in attacks and violence in
the past month. Do you see any relation to the current situation in
Syria as the terrorist groups there are getting support from the US and
its allies?

al-Motallebi: Yes, I think one of the factors, one
of the reasons for the escalation of violence in Iraq could be for
regional reasons from regional interferences.

Unfortunately, we
have very complicated circumstances happening in Syria and a lot of
al-Qaeda is transferring their activities from Iraq into Syria and vice
versa.

Also, we have a complicated political situation with KRG,
the Kurdistan Regional Government. Usually whenever we have differences
with Kurdistan there would be an escalation of violence.

We are
not sure of the relationship between the two events, but we cannot
escape the fact that there are may be regional interference from
inside Iraq or from Syria and definitely Turkey and Saudi Arabia will
always be accused of instigating unrest in Iraq.

State of Law may have also been behind the rumors about the KRG earlier today. Alsumaria reports
KRG President Massoud Barzani has denied that the KRG will be providing
asylum to the residents of Camp Ashraf. What is Camp Ashraf?

Since
Barack Obama has been sworn in as US president, Nouri has ordered not
one but two attacks on Camp Ashraf resulting in multiple deaths. Let's
recap. July 28, 2009
Nouri launched an attack (while then-US Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates was on the ground in Iraq). In a report released this summer
entitled "Iraqi government must respect and protect rights of Camp Ashraf residents,"
Amnesty International described this assault, "Barely a month later, on
28-29 July 2009, Iraqi security forces stormed into the camp; at least
nine residents were killed and many more were injured. Thirty-six
residents who were detained were allegedly tortured and beaten. They
were eventually released on 7 October 2009; by then they were in poor
health after going on hunger strike." April 8, 2011,
Nouri again ordered an assault on Camp Ashraf (then-US Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates was again on the ground in Iraq when the assault
took place). Amnesty International described the assault this way,
"Earlier this year, on 8 April, Iraqi troops took up positions within
the camp using excessive, including lethal, force against residents who
tried to resist them. Troops used live ammunition and by the end of the
operation some 36 residents, including eight women, were dead and more
than 300 others had been wounded. Following international and other
protests, the Iraqi government announced that it had appointed a
committee to investigate the attack and the killings; however, as on
other occasions when the government has announced investigations into
allegations of serious human rights violations by its forces, the
authorities have yet to disclose the outcome, prompting questions
whether any investigation was, in fact, carried out." Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observes
that "since 2004, the United States has considered the residents of
Camp Ashraf 'noncombatants' and 'protected persons' under the Geneva
Conventions."

In
recent weeks the situation surrounding the safety of 3,400 members of
an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq has taken a significant turn
in the halls of the White House.

As
the US takes a keener interest in protecting these Iranians from the
clutches of the regime in Tehran, it appears that this US administration
has finally realised that it cannot allow Iraq to fall into the hands
of Tehran.

How the story of Camp Ashraf now plays out will tell us much about where the future of Iraq lies.

[. . .]

[US
Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton and her team in Iraq must succeed
in guaranteeing the safety of the Camp Ashraf residents. This will allow
the UN to carry out the ultimate relocation work. Not only will this
ensure that the US has carried out its humanitarian duty, but further it
will leave Iraq less influenced by Iran and the US seen as a nation
which lives up to its obligation. This is something that the entire
democratic opposition movements of the Arab Spring will look to for hope
and is a test which the US cannot fail.

The
US State Dept may make a decision in October, it may not, as to the
residents. The US federal court system is expecting the State Dept to
have made a decision by then.

Roseanne
Barr: David, you know one thing I want to say is Obama is trying to
take our medical marijuana over there in California and trying to send
in federal troops to get our medical marijuana and I'll tell you this,
Obama, you'll get my joint when you pry it ouf of my cold, dead
fingers. That's when. And I know -- I don't want to get Obama's kill
list. You know, I got to look out for drones on my way home now I know.

David Letterman: Let's say a person signs up for the medical marijuana --

Roseanne Barr: Okay.

David Letterman: -- is there a list of ailments that you have to support or prove you have?

Roseanne
Barr: You know, it's not funny, Dave. It's a real medicine that a lot
of people can't live without. I mean it really helps with mental
illness and stuff which is why I use it. [Applause.] The only bad
thing is you can't use it and own a gun. If you're on the medical
marijuana, they won't let you own a gun. Well all these drunks are
walking around with guns. And now, did you know that in the state of
California that big government is trying to get these porn stars and
force them to wear rubbers. The founding fathers are rolling over in
their graves on that, Dave.

While
I deeply respect Rocky Anderson and Jill Stein, I'm in the process of
organizing a Peace & Freedom Party affiliate here in Florida and
hope to place Roseanne Barr and Cindy Sheehan on the November ballot. We
filed our qualifying paperwork -- i.e., the party's officers, bylaws
and constitution -- with the Division of Elections on Tuesday.

Sam
Sacks: The Green Party is the only political party today running on a
new Economic Bill of Rights guaranteeing a job, a living wage, quality
health care, a good education and housing and other rights to all
Americans. Not only that, the Green Party is the only political party
that's speaking out against the corporate takeover of our democracy and
economy. It's running on a platform to overturn corporate personhood,
guarantee a vote for all eligible Americans and set up a robust public
financing system that breaks up the two party duopoly in America and
brings new ideas into the political debate. Our nation is in crisis
today and it's obvious that doubling down on 30 years of failed economic
policy won't work and neither will trimming around the edges and
looking for minor tweeks. We need revolutionary change in America and
joining me now to talk about how that happens is Dr. Jill Stein, the
Green Party's presidential candidate for president of the United
States. Dr. Stein, welcome.

Jill Stein: Thank you so much, Sam, it's great to be with you.

Sam
Sacks: It's an honor to have you on. You're proposing this Bill of
Economic Rights I just mentioned that [US President Franklin D.]
Roosevelt tried to propose. Had he been successful 70 years ago, would
we have been able to see CEOs taking more and more profits that should
have gone to better wages? Would we have seen Too Big To Fail jump up
on Wall Street and crash our economy? Would we be in the mess that
we're in today.

Jill
Stein: Well we certainly shouldn't be. You know, where we'd be is
hard to say because even those reforms that were passed in that era
following the Great Depression, those reforms to separate the investment
from the commercial banks, the Social Security, Medicare, you know, the
various reforms that have grown out of the New Deal and beyond, they
are -- they havehave been under attack for decades. So it's hard to say
where we'd be, but it's clear that right now we are in a real crisis.
And that crisis give us, you know, it's really a perfect storm for
revisting where we are. And that means not only an Economic Bill of
Rights, but also a full employment program to put people back to work.
We did this in the midst of the Great Depression. And the New Deal
substantially got us out of the Great Depression. It reduced the
unemployment rate to about 25% down to about 10% before the start of
WWII which finished the job. But prior to that it had been enormously
successful. There's no reason why we don't do that today. We could
have a full employment program by directly creating jobs -- for
basically the amount of money that the president spent in the stimulus
package of 2009. Instead of jump starting two to three million jobs
which was actually what was created then, we could actually create 16
million jobs directly, which in turn would create a secondary waves of
about 8 million jobs, get us to 25 million jobs which is what we need.
And the difference is that instead of providing tax breaks to large
corporations which was the bulk of that stimulus package, instead we
can directly provide jobs at the community level, provide national
funding, but put communities in charage of deciding what jobs they need
to become sustainable not only economically, [but] socially and also
environmentally. And in doing that, we not only solve the economic
emergency that we're facing but also the climate emergency because the
Green New Deal jump starts that transformation to the Green Economy
which is absolutely essential if we're to survive not only into the next
century but increasingly we're looking at into the next decade or two
given the rate at which climate change is accelerating and exceeding the
wildest and most dire predictions of the science which is has been
proven really to have been too optimistic. So, in our view, the clock
is ticking. We don't have time to fool around with the unemployment
crisis or the climate crisis that we're facing.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

There was a time when that might have been sad to me. His crap in 2008 ensured that I was left indifferent to the passing. I wouldn't even be writing about it now but I think David Walsh (WSWS) nailed it in his obit:

Cockburn did not look back from this. Whatever critique of this or
that feature of contemporary society he offered during the next forty
years was never rooted in a scientific assessment of capitalist society
and the contradictions that would inevitably produce social explosions.After all, could a serious threat to the powers that be have been tolerated for a decade at the Wall Street Journal, a principal mouthpiece of the US financial oligarchy? When the Village Voice fired Cockburn in 1984, largely because of his exposure of Israeli crimes, the Journal kept the journalist on the payroll, noting complacently that “Interesting columnists come, like Cromwell, warts and all.”Cockburn’s
writing has a political sameness about it, from year to year. To a
certain extent, he required verbal gifts and “spice” to disguise the
fact that he was repeating many of the same truisms (at best) over and
over again.Going through the pages of the numerous books put out
by Cockburn and St. Clair in the past decade, for example, one comes
upon colorful accounts, interesting facts and even insights. The New York Times and Judith Miller receive a deserved pummeling, along with the Washington Post,
Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, Rupert Murdoch, Colin Powell, Elie Wiesel, the
“war on drugs,” Bill Clinton and Al Gore, liberal proponents of torture,
and so forth.Cockburn certainly had an advantage over those who
were frantically abandoning every principle and joining the
pro-imperialist camp in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and
during the wars against the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
and now Syria.

[. . .]

In this regard, Cockburn and St. Clair are not distinguished
from the pseudo-left as a whole, including the International Socialist
Organization and numerous other “socialist” tendencies that conceive of
the “left” as a lobby within the Democratic Party orbit.

The latest tangles started Tuesday, when Vice
President Joe Biden at a rally in southern Virginia jumped off his
script to make a point about Romney’s Wall Street proposals.

Biden said, “Romney . . . in the first hundred
days, he is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules.
Unchain Wall Street. They are going to put y’all back in chains.”

I don’t have a clue why Biden, from Delaware,
decided to use a Southern dialect — that’s what it sounded like when I
listened to him several times. And yes, race comes to mind because of
where Biden said it.

Romney jumped on the opening Biden gave him at his rally in Chillicothe, Ohio, Tuesday night and Wednesday.

“Another outrageous charge just came a few hours
ago in Virginia, and the White House sinks a little bit lower. This is
what an angry and desperate presidency looks like. President Obama knows
better, promised better, and America deserves better,” Romney said
Tuesday.

The New York Post offers this take on why Biden said something that would at least appear to be painting Romney as a racist:

Surely the president’s diminishing support with his bedrock core
constituency — African-Americans — has his chief political operatives in
a sweat.A recent poll by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy
Polling gives Romney 20 percent of the black vote in North Carolina — a
state where Obama took 95 percent of black votes in 2008.And where, as recently as May, he was winning 87 percent of those votes.Polls in other states with a large black vote have shown similar results.Why? Who knows? We’d guess that the president’s “evolution” on gay marriage has disconcerted African-American social conservatives. But for whatever reason, the decline — while marginal — is real.

Wednesday,
August 15, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri continues spying
on Iraqis, the stalemate continues as well, an Iraqi who came to the US
(after snitching on his own father) is charged in a rape, Australians
begin to lobby for an inquiry into the Iraq War, we look at two
presidential campaigns, and more.

It's
war, war, war all the time thanks to no real change in the Oval Office
in years. As Syria remains targeted, international law expert Francis
A. Boyle weighed in today:

Professor
of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in
Champaign, Boyle said today: "Without authorization by the United
Nations Security Council and express authorization from the U.S.
Congress pursuant to the terms of the War Powers Resolution, for
President Obama to establish any type of so-called 'no-fly zone' over
Syria would be illegal, unconstitutional, and impeachable." While
serving as the Lawyer for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in
1993, Boyle procured the NATO no-fly zone over Bosnia. He is the author
of The Bosnian People Charge Genocide (Aletheia Press: 1966).

Staying on the topic of Syria, on yesterday's Flashpoints Radio on KPFA (here for KPFA archive -- after 14 days, the show will only be archived at Flashpoints
site), guest host Kevin Pina spoke with a Syrian correspondent. His
name was something like Al'a Ibrahim. (Something like? I'm not sure of
the spelling.) We'll do an excerpt.

Kevin
Pina: My last question is you've probably heard in Damascus the
increasing rhetoric by the Obama adminstration, Secretary [of State]
Hillary Clinton certainly raising the stakes, saying openly that they
are preparing for a post government, a government post-Assad
dictatorship -- as they're describing it. Has there been any reaction
in Damascua? Have people heard of it, these pronouncements by Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton?

Syrian
Correspondent in Damascus: Well though it's very useful to call on the
statements of the American Secretary of State Clinton and American
President Barack Obama, I don't know how much we can count on them.
Let's keep in mind, President Obama said last year, in June, that the
days of President [Bashir] al-Assad were numbered. Yet, a year later,
he's still in power. He still controls the army. He still controls the
country and everything seems to be at his hands right now. So as
important as these statemens may be as an indication of where the
American politics are going and what they will do, I wouldn't count on
this? I think one way or anorther we're seeing the events in Syria.
They're saying they've been preparing for the post-Assad era and they
should worry about all the free army. The Free Army is obviously linked
to al Qaeda, is obviously linked to jihadists. Everyone knows that.
You have people coming from all over the world to fight the Syrian
government, a secular government. [. . .] Who will they attack later
on? I've been speaking today with one of my sources inside the Free
Syrian Army and he told me something very interesting. There's a rift
growing right now between the Free Army and these and when we talk about
the when we talk about the Free Army, we're talking about mainy that
includes some deserting soldiers, some people who are against the
government, some people who have issues with authority one way or the
other.

And the other side? The
Islamic Movement, the Red Brigade and the front for al Qaeda. The
correspondent noted that in addition to the growing rift, he has also
observed this second side burying weapons. Why? They're convinced that
President Bashar al-Assad will be driven out of the country and that
when that happens, that's when they will need weapons to take over the
country.

That's who the US government has
gotten into bed with. And it does matter who you get in bed with. The
US government previously hopped into bed with Jasim Mohammed Hassin
Ramadon. The Iraqi should have sent off alarm signals and would have in
any thinking person's head. "Turncoat" is the only word for him. He
repeatedly turned over Iraqis, snitched on them, to the US military.
Some might applaud that but I think even those who applaud would pause
when they learned that among those who snitched and saw taken away was
his own father. Matt Stafford (KOAA) told
the tale of the snitch and as Iraq War veteran Delman Fletcher says in
that report, "13 years old; who would turn in their father?" Exactly.

The
snitch is making headlines again. The 22-year-old* is now accused of a
violent assault. [*22? In the KOAA story already linked to, he is
said to be 19. That was last October. All outlets today are reporting
he is 22.] AP explains
the turncoat "is one of five Iraqis accused of rape-related chartes
after a woman suffered serious injuries during a [. . .] assault in
Colorado Springs." Andy Koen (KOAA) reports
that the police say "a significant of blood" was all over the crime
scene and quotes police Lt Howard Black stating, "I would tell you that
this is one of the most horrific [. . .] assault crimes I've seen in my
career as a police officer." [What's missing? "Sexual." We say over
and over -- rightly -- that rape is not about sex. So why are we
calling these crimes "sexual assaults"? I don't know. I've heard it
questioned by others but only registered as a result of our noting
various assaults here. From this point forward, we're not including
"sexual" before assaults in these cases.] The other four suspects
arrested are Ali Mohammed Hasan Al Juboori, Sarmad Fadhi Mohammed, Yasir
Jabbar Jasim and Mustafa Sataar Al Feraji. And, yes, they all are
suspects at this point, even Jasim Mohammed Hassin Ramadon. But when
you snitch on your father, when you snitch on your own father and get
him turned over to foreign forces in your country, no one's going to
rush to give you too much benefit of the doubt. All five men are
Iraqis.

Jasim Moahmmed Hassin Ramadon has been charged with assault and with being an accessory. Charges are pending against the others. CBS Denver adds
that, "Police say she [the victim] sufered significant internal
injuries consistent with blunt force trauma and serious bodily injuries
that they say they rarely see. Because the men are Iraqis with
permanent resident status, the Colorado Springs Police Department says
they may be deported if they are convicted." On this story, the US
press would do well to stop referring to Ramadon as a "hero." In Iraq,
he's not considered a hero. You don't turn your own father over to
foreign, occupying forces and get to be called a 'hero.' If he is
found guilty, his attorney will most likely (he has a public defender at
present) argue against returning him to Iraq by insisting that
Ramadon's collaboration with the US military means he is at risk of
being killed if he returns to Iraq. Should that argument take place,
the American news consumer will grasp it a lot quicker if this 'hero'
nonsense was dropped.

The news cycle started today with Australia as Ninesmn reported former
Minister of Defense Robert Hill (2001 to 2006) was insisting that
Australia didn't need an inquiry into the Iraq War with him declaring,
"There's a lot of big challenges out there in the world today, including
challenges of peace and security." And that could have been the end of
it. Certainly after the miserable inquiry into the death of Jake
Kovko, no one can expect much in the way of honesty from the Australian
government on the topic of Iraq. But then other voices began weighing
in. Radio Australia notes, "Former defence secretary Paul Barratt has told Australia Network's Newsline
it is apparent now that in the lead-up to the war there was a great
deal of manipulation of intelligence within the US system." Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian) reports:

Demands
for an inquiry are led by former Liberal prime minister, Malcolm
Fraser, former defence secretary, Paul Barratt, and former chief of the
Australian Defence Force, General Peter Gration.

In
a foreword to the publication "Why did we go to war in Iraq? A call for
an Australian inquiry", which says Australia was exposed to the
accusation of waging an illegal war, Fraser writes that an inquiry would
not rake over old coals but rather "develop a better understanding of
how warfare decisions are reached and to strengthen the governmental
structures against precipitous or ill-considered actions in future."

The
call for an inquiry is also supported by a statement signed by 30
leading academics in politics and law, retired senior diplomats and
experts in the field of war and conflict.

There
are several reasons why an inquiry would be timely, if not overdue.
First, 2013 will mark the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Iraq
War. A decade on is a good time to reflect back on the reasons,
circumstances and decision-making procedures by which a country went to
any war.

Second, there is by now
widespread, although not unanimous, international agreement that the
Iraq War was morally wrong, illegal, unjustified and had many seriously
damaging consequences for Western interests. The primary justification
for going to war was to destroy an alleged active program of building
weapons of mass destruction. This has been proven false. In 2008 former
secretary of state Madeleine Albright said that the invasion of Iraq was
''the greatest disaster in American foreign policy'', worse even than
Vietnam in its unintended consequences. We need to study the long-term
consequences of the war for Australia's security interests.

Third,
prime minister John Howard committed Australia to war by citing the
ANZUS Treaty. Yet the Iraq War may itself have been in violation of
Australia's international obligations under ANZUS. Its Article 1
obligates all members to settle any international disputes ''by peaceful
means in such a manner that international peace and security and
justice are not endangered and to refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent
with the purposes of the United Nations''. Australia must reconcile its
ANZUS and UN obligations.

Will
Australia get an inquiry? It would put it ahead of the US which still
hasn't had a real one. Also true is that John Howard, prime minister at
the start of the Iraq War, doesn't feel like he's ever gotten the
credit he deserves. His envy of all the press attention on War
Criminals Bush and Blair could have him itching to appear before ain
inquiry board.

Kristina Wong (Washington Times) reports,
"The Pentagon's top officer [Gen Martin Dempsey, Chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff] will travel to Iraq at the end the month to check on
progress in a country that has been beset by sectarian violence and
political turmoil since the United States withdrew most of its troops in
December."

And in Iraq, multiple acts of violence. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports
a Baquba car bombing claimed 3 lives and left nine more people injured
while in Muqdadiya a car bombing was quickly followed by a second
bombing resulting in 7 deaths and twenty-seven people injured. al-Shorfa adds that Iyad Hussein Ahmed ("lead judicial investigator in Mosul) was shot dead in Mosul. All Iraq News reports
a police officer was shot dead in Mosul and a woman and her daughter
were left wounded due to an attack on the checkpoint by unknown
assailants. AP reports
2 Yazidis were shot dead in Qahataniya (the two were brothers). AFP
notes a Dohuk sticky bombing which left two people injured. In
addition, Alsumaria notes the PKK has announced they killed 2 Turkish soldiers near the Iraq border. Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) counts 13 people reported dead yesterday in Iraq and another seventeen reported injured. Also today, Ahlul Bayt News Agency reports another mass arrest, this time 7 were arrested in Anbar Province.

The big news out of Iraq today centers around spying. Al Mada reports
that Nouri al-Maliki has been provided with sophisticated spying
devices which allow him to gather information on his political rivals
and, the devices were provided by the US government. These devices are
said to have been used to record the recently released 2011 conversation
between Tareq al-Hashemi and Ayad Allawi. Along with speaking to
various MPs, Al Mada also spoke with security sources and they revealed
that the hidden camera was found in Tareq al-Hashemi's former office and
that this is one of many such devices Nouri has planted in the offices
of his rivals. (For more on the spying topic and for the al-Hasemi and
Allawi taped conversation, see "Iraq's sex tape rumors.")

As
early as 2008, Parliament was sounding alarms that their private
discussions did not appear to be so private. In the years since, it's
only been more obvious that Nouri has been illegally spying. From the October 31, 2011 snapshot:Mvelase Peppetta (Memeburn) reports
alarm that the government of Syria has "internaet censorship
equipment." It's illegal, according to US law, for it to have this Blue
Coat Systems 'filter.' How did it get it? Apparently from Iraq. The US
government okayed the sale of web censorship equipment to Iraq. Did the
US government bother to run that past either the Iraqi people or the
American people? No. Nor did it publicize the sale.

Today Khaled Waleed (Niqash) reports on the issue:The
US government says it is investigating how the devices got to Syria and
Blue Coat Systems of Sunnyvale, the California-based company
responsible for manufacturing the equipment, says it is cooperating
fully. If the firm deliberately violated the sanctions -- which say
special permission is required to import this kind of equipment into
Syria -- then it could be liable for a fine of up to US$1 million.Although
the 14 web monitoring devices were shipped to Dubai late in 2010 from
where they were supposed to be sent to Iraq, Iraq itself has denied any
involvement in the transaction.Nonetheless
in Iraq, the issue is also causing concern. Since 2004, when the US put
into effect the Syria Accountability Act, for what the US sees as
Syria's support of "terrorism, involvement in Lebanon, weapons of mass
destruction programs and the destabilizing role it is playing in Iraq",
goods that contain more than 10 per cent componentry that is
manufactured in the US have been prohibited from being exported there.
However it is quite possible that Syria has been able to obtain
embargoed goods through third parties. The question now is what Iraq
had to do with the 13 Blue Coat web surveillance devices.

Now
the US government is worried about supplying freedom suppressing
techonology? Now that Syria has the technology and might use it to harm
the people of Syria. But the US allowed despot Nouri to have the
technology even though he has a long record of suppressing freedom.

In
2011, journalists and activists repeatedly spoke of how they were being
spyed on. They noted that the Iraqi government seemed to know a great
deal about them. They were threatened on their cell phones and told not
to attend protests. A huge wealth of information appeared to be
available to Nouri al-Maliki.

In addition to the above, Al Mada
notes the Ministry of Communication recently issued a warning that cell
phones were being monitored by "international" bodies -- such as the
CIA which remains in Iraq.

Guess what else
remains in Iraq? That's right, the political stalemate. It might be
something Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari would like to speak to the US
Ambassador to Iraq about. However, there is no US Ambassador to Iraq. All Iraq News reports he met instead with Robert Beecroft who is the Charge D'Affairs. Al Mada reports
that Kurdish MP Muhammad Qasim told them the questioning of Nouri
before Parliament and no-confidence vote has not been forgotten, merely
delayed until after Eid al-Fitr. Qasim notes that the Constitution
allows for the questioning of the PM and that they are doing things
according to the law. Earlier, Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi
also noted that the questioning had not been disgarged. Eid al-Fitr is
a holiday to mark the end of Ramadan and of fasting during that holy
month. In Iraq this year, it starts on August 19th and continues on the
20th and 21st. It's a three day celebration. All Iraq News notes
that State of Law MP Abdul Slam al-Maliki has issued a statement
declaring that the names of the nominees for the Minister of Defense and
Minister of Interior will be announced after Eid al-Fitr.

Christophe Ayad (Le Monde via the Guardian) weighs in on the conflict between Nouri's Baghdad-based government and the Kurdistan Regional Government: Baghdad
and Erbil have an endless list of grievances, ranging from border
controls and the integration of the peshmerga to the Iraqi national
army, to the delimitation of Kurdistan and the sharing of wealth between
the centre and the autonomous region – especially oil.There
is a fear that growing Kurdish independence will serve as an example to
the Sunni provinces, or even to the oil-rich Shia province of Basra in
the far south of Iraq, which produces 2m of the 2.5m Iraqi barrels a
day. "Al-Maliki would far rather be the leader of a large country than
the master of a 'Shia-istan' in the south of Iraq," was one western
diplomat's analysis. Conversely, Barzani sees himself as the defender of
Iraqi minorities in the face of Shia "hegemony". That is why he granted
asylum to the Sunni vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi in December 2011,
after he was judged in abstentia in Iraq for having headed a death squad
during the civil war (2005-2008).

The much anticipated Reform Commission is really just a forthcoming list. Alsumaria notes
that the KRG, via Mohammad Ehsan, has made clear that the list better
include the issue of Article 140. Article 140 is in the Iraq
Constitution -- hence its name -- and it requires that the disputed
territories have a census and referendum. It also was supposed to be
implemented by the end of 2007. This is not open to debate or dispute,
this is written into the Constitution. Nouri al-Maliki becomes prime
minister in Iraq in the spring of 2006. But Nouri ignored it, despite
taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. He has repeatedly refused to
implement this.

Omali
Yeshitela: It is time for us to demand that we change the situation
where we have people who are running for office, and Barack Hussein
Obama is just a glaring example, that can speak to every constituency,
make all kinds of promises to every constituency, except the African
community. That has nothing positive to say. In fact, the only time he
speaks to the African community generally speaking has been negatively
while he can give the whole of Jerusalem to the Israelis in order to
court the Jewish vote and this country, while he can talk about
accepting and promoting same-sex marriages to win the gay vote in this
country, while he can even give platitudes to the so-called Latino
Hispanic, as he calls it, vote even while deporting more than even Bush
did, he cannot even make any promise, he cannot even make a promise
specific to the African community which suffers from severe
contradictions -- which is not to say that other communities don't.
But the fact is we can no longer tolerate a situation where somebody can
simply get our vote by being Black and being unwilling to address any
of the contradictions specific to our community.

Glen Ford: And isn't this distressing that for the first time Black folks are accepting not being directly spoken to?

Omali
Yeshitela: It is extraordinarly distressing and I'm concerned about
what it could mean in terms of a certain kind of precedent because how
do you come back and make demands on any other president when all we do
is make excuses for this guy? I hear people saying, 'Well he's
representing all the people so we can't make demands specific to us.' I
hear them saying, 'Well the power of the president is so limited so he
can't do this and that.' But that's now what people were saying about
Bush. And that's not even what a lot of people were saying about
Clinton. So this guy gets a free ride. And in doing so, I just hate
what it means in terms of politically immobilizing the African community
and I believe putting us in bad place in terms of being able to make
demands on any person who is in office and certainly the president. But
that is one of the things that I believe that makes the Black is Back
coalition so important at this juncture in history when the world is
going through such incredible transformation -- that the Black Is Back
Coalition has been there, has not deserted the African community, has
tried to arm the community so that despite the fact that so many are
currently less than before but caught up in the Obama Drama that people
will be able to have some kind of leadership that they can fall back on
as a consequence of what this coalition is doing.

The New York Times reported
last month that the Green Party "expects to be on the ballot in at
least 45 states." And Stein "will be the party's first candidate to have
qualified for federal matching funds -- a milestone for this
11-year-old alternative party and potentially a major boost for a
campaign that does not accept corporate donations."

Jill:
/ Well, there's one thing I should say which is just that the core of
the Green New Deal is actually creating jobs and for the cost of the
President's first Stimulus Package, which made a small dent but really
wasn't a solution. It was not a solution of the magnitude that we need.
This would really create the solution that we need for the same amount
of money but it would work, because instead of just giving it away to
corporations, which was the majority of that Stimulus Package. It was
basically tax breaks. That doesn't create jobs. Instead we would do
direct job creation like they did during the New Deal. It actually
worked. It substantially moved us forward out of the Great Depression.
This would put resources and money--

Rob: What does that mean? "Direct job creation?" That sounds like bottom up to me.

Jill:
Exactly. It's totally bottom up, so that it would provide the funding
from a national level. It would provide the funding, and I'll talk about
where the funding comes from in a second. But it provides the funding
to communities, so it's an extremely bottom up solution. It provides it
to communities. It's not a top down cookie cutter program. It provides
resources to communities and certain guidelines that allow the
communities to identify what kinds of jobs they need in order to become
sustainable; not just ecologically but also economically and socially.
So, it provides communities the ability to create jobs which are locally
based. So, we're not talking about bringing in a branch of Bank of
America or some mortgage foundation or some multi-national corporation:
Coca-Cola or whatever. It's about jumpstarting local small businesses
and worker cooperatives in a whole broad area of the Green economy and
areas that meet our social and economic needs so that we have local
economies where the dollars are being re-circulated. Where, as you
probably know, every dollars counts for much more because it's passing
through the hands--many hands within the community. Every dollar counts
for more and the profits are not being shipped overseas to corporate
headquarters in the Cayman Islands. They stay right there in small
businesses, who've been killed, been killed by both Democratic and
Republican policies over the last couple decades. So this re-establishes
local small business-based economies and businesses as well as worker
cooperatives, because we need to diversify this economy.

It
also creates public services and public works which allow you to just
go down to the employment office instead of the unemployment office and
at the employment office, you can get a job doing a whole variety of
services and works that serve your community. And again, this is within
that broad spectrum of jobs that range from local food supplies,
establishing a relocalized organic agricultural system, which is
resilient to the stresses of rising oil prices as well as climate change
and all that. There's just innumerable benefits to developing local
sustainable agriculture and supporting our small farmers, as well as
public transportation, including an active. What we call recreational
transportation components, so you can ride your bike to the train, get
on the train, have a place to take your bike with your or leave it
there, etc. That begins to create an infrastructure for health that
allows us to get our exercise, getting to where we need to go safely
and conveniently instead of having to go join a health club and pay a
big health fee. That's not how you get a healthy society. We need to be
able to be active as a component of transportation.

It
includes, of course, weatherization, insulation--all those things that
can put communities to work that have high unemployment rates but don't
have PhDs. You don't even need a high school degree in order to do that
insulation and sort of simple construction and weatherization work. So,
we can get the jobs into the communities that need them most and I
should mention that that is a provision also of the Green New Deal; that
it directs the resources to where they're need, not to the places that
have political influence, but rather particularly it prioritizes the
places with the worst unemployment so we can start providing the relief
where it is most needed. That includes, creating green energy as well,
solar and wind as well as the efficiencies and as well as the social
services, like teachers and nurses, after school daycare, elder care,
drug abuse prevention and rehabilitation, violence prevention and
affordable housing construction. So, it's a broad range of job.

Communities
have full leeway to decide what kinds of jobs are priorities for them
and are needed most in their communities. So, it's a win-win because it
not only solves the economic emergency, it also solves the climate
emergency, because it prioritizes that transition to green energy and it
also just so happens, it make wars for oil, obsolete. You don't need
oil when you've got green energy here at home. And in doing that, it
allows us to cut back on our military budget which has doubled over the
last decade without making us twice as secure. Hardly, in many ways, we
are not more secure at all. So, we're calling for downsizing and right
sizing the military, bringing the troops home and bringing the bases
home as well that are scattered around the globe.

Sunday, Roseanne Barr became the first presidential candidate to be roasted on TV. Kenneth Walsh [kenneth in the (212)] notes
his favorite moment of the roast was when Roseanne said, "I'd really
like to thank [ex-husband] Tom [Arnold] for showing up tonight . . . he
was very funny . . . but, Jesus Christ, how many [bleeping] jobs do I
have to get for that guy. If I can bury my rolling, boiling, ceaseless
hatred for the likes of Tom Arnold, maybe there's a chance we can have
world peace."

The
P&F Party describes itself as California's Feminist Socialist
Political Party and "opposes capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and
elitism." Though she has no chance to win, she told CNN's Piers Morgan that she hopes to make "socialist solutions part of the narrative."

Answering a Green Party questionnaire
earlier this year, Barr says the issues closest to her heart were
obliterating the two party system (she calls them the "two-headed
beast"); ending corporate personhood; preventing the exportation of jobs
to "countries with immoral, inadequate and nonexistent labor laws;"
shutting down all U.S. military bases worldwide, and legalizing
marijuana.

On her Peace and Freedom platform she
also says she also will recognize Palestine, forgive all student loans,
and allow third-parties the right to ballot access in all 50 states.

This
weekend please join former Congresswoman and presidential candidate
Cynthia McKinney along with Roseanne Barr – who is running for President
this November! Both of these courageous women will be appearing on the
2nd day (Saturday, August 18) of this 3 day historical event.

The
Consciousness Beyond Chemtrails Conference will be held from August 17 –
19, 2012, at the historic Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. The entire
event will also be available live online; details for viewing are listed
on the website.

At the conference an
impressive roster of concerned citizens will examine the global
implications of manipulating the weather. In addition to Roseanne Barr
and Cynthia McKinney, international bestselling author and GMO expert
Jeffrey M. Smith, will discuss the alarming increase in genetically
engineered foods and there will also be the world premiere of Michael
Murphy's new film, "Why in The World Are They Spraying?"

Cindy
Sheehan: It was relevant to say though because everybody thinks that
Roseanne Barr is not serious about running for president --

Charles Karel: Right.

Cindy
Sheehan: And she's very serious. She's not a clown, she's a comedian.
I think you know the difference between being a clown and a comedian. A
comedian can like dig down in these serious issues and make them
relevant and funny to people so they understand them better.

Charles Karel: Right.

Cindy Sheehan: It's just something that needed to be said.

[. . .]

Charles Karel: GIven that you may not win, what do you want to add to the dialogue of the campaigns?

Cindy
Sheehan: There's one very specific thing that we'd like for to happen
in California, of course we need to register 48,000 more people to the
Peace and Freedom Party and if we get 50,000 people to register to the
Peace and Freedom, that sends a message to the Democrats that they're
not doing their job. And another thing is my major issue is peace. Of
course, Roseanne is a big anti-war, anti-empire, pro-peace person
herself, but her big issue is medicinal cannabis.

Followers

About Me

I'm Michael, Mike to my friends. College student working his way through. I'm also Irish-American and The New York Times can kiss my Irish ass. And check out Trina's Kitchen on my links, that's my mother's site.